


(you can't forget the nights)

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Adultery, Age Regression Due To Trauma, Brother/Brother Incest, Casual Ableism, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Sexual Age Regression, Period Typical Attitudes, Sibling Incest, Vinland Saga Manga Spoilers, at different times from:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 15:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21460645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: And back again.
Relationships: Atli/Presumable Canon Wife (Vinland Saga), Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous





	(you can't forget the nights)

**Author's Note:**

> companion to [don't forget the nights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443119), not risking making a Series while posting anon :3c
> 
> i don't consider this a continuation of [holy men](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232961), but rape of male captives/defeated combatants wasn't uncommon for the Vikings, so it's a theme here as well.

He's not as strong as he once was. Torgrim's sure of that. There's been time, he doesn't know how much, with no physical activity to speak of. Just a long blur made up of a few dimly remembered moments, none standing out clearly. Makes his head hurt to think of it as reality, so he doesn't.

But his brother, when he lifts him, has lost weight. He's been hungry, and he is tired. So even in his weakened state Torgrim can carry him inside and get him into the bath. There's nothing sexual about the bath, except the way Atli looks at him, happy and disbelieving and half starved. He's covered in still-healing bruises and abrasions, and Torgrim feels his blood boiling along with the water. This is why they don't split up. Whatever fool had them working separately had better hope Torgrim never finds him.

Mostly, though, he's just dirty as hell. Torgrim combs his hair just the way they used to every night—the way they _do_ every night, the way Torgrim knows they do. They've been apart a week or two, no more. The rest—cutting his hair, trimming the overgrown beard and mustache, he leaves to the woman. Something about the thought of doing it himself makes the world blur again.

He doesn't fully believe what the woman told him, but what Atli says he has to. So much less than the woman said. He was different for a while. They had to come home. That's all.

He asks where the rest of the band is, why he hasn't seen a single one of them in town. Still traveling, Atli says. None of them likely to return soon, but he's sure they're all still together. He won't talk about that much.

Askeladd died, four years ago. Torgrim's sorry to hear that. He was always a good leader. 

The woman will do. That's all. She tolerates him in her house, he tolerates her in his. They allow each other just enough of Atli to keep him from breaking apart.

The children seem to know him, but he's never been much good with kids and does his best to avoid them. He doesn't like them sharing blood with him he never wanted shared. Blood they'd promised would never _be_ shared.

"It was for you," Atli says one day in the woods. "I couldn't live alone, not with you... as you were. You were at the wedding. You got so excited. You asked when the next one would be."

He could get his way if he wanted, always could. He could take his brother back. He could get Atli back on the road, just the two of them, blurred times or no. But something in Atli's gotten stronger in his absence—or maybe was, all along—and Torgrim can feel a distance between them already, that would only grow if he did.

So, "I know it was," he says.

"It's different," says Atli. "It's not like with us."

He's begging for forgiveness. Never could stand to have his big brother angry, and hasn't Torgrim put that to good use over the years. He's glad that hasn't changed.

"I know," he says, and can't help adding, "It couldn't be."

"We're halves," Atli says. "They're... they're on the outside."

But they're still out there clinging to him. Torgrim has no memories of Atli that are not of _his other half_, not one second of his life. Atli is always there. He remembers Atli from before Atli could remember anyone or anything. That Atli now has memories of him as someone else, that _they_ have memories of his brother from times he will never remember—that's what he really can't let go of.

"Can you forgive them?" Atli asks. He's missing teeth now, from the time neither Torgrim nor the woman can get him to speak of, and that might be worse than the woman having any part of him, Torgrim thinks as he cups his brother's chin without thinking. For there to be parts in Atli no one can reach at all.

"I can allow them," he says, and his brother relaxes. "For the times I can't be there."

"Thank you," Atli says. "Thank you."

The tears come too easily to his brother now, Torgrim thinks as he wipes Atli's face. There's been too much happened in the blurred times, and he can't say how much of it was his fault, so he doesn't scold Atli as he would have, once. He kisses him full on the mouth as he never would have, once, and says when the tears have stopped, "As long as there are spaces only I can fill."

"Aye," Atli says, quieter. "I have missed that."

He doesn't like the tenseness he feels in his brother's body even as all distance between them fades away. It reminds him too much of what he knows from their raiding days, makes him think of things he won't allow to have happened. Not to his little brother. There aren't words to ask, so he doesn't. He just goes slow, careful, gentle, the only way there is to say _We are one, still and always, we will fill up what's missing between us, whatever it is._

He knows Atli thinks there'll be more blurred time for him. He doesn't like to think, won't let himself think, that he might not be man enough to hold it back. But right now, Atli's voice beneath him whispering, "Brother, brother," just loud enough for him and only him, is all he needs to hold himself here in this world. Right now he's all the man he needs to be.


End file.
